Local and federal regulations regarding the emissions of sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere has stressed a need for using low sulfur fuels in various energy producing processes.
While there exists a supply of low sulfur solid and liquid carbonaceous fuels the supply is ever dwindling and efforts have been made to reduce the sulfur content of carbonaceous fuels whose sulfur content is presently too high for consumption in systems emitting flue gases to the atmosphere.
Many processes have been proposed for the desulfurization of solid carbonaceous fuels.
One such process is that described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,824,047 to Goren et al. The process consists of passing a non caking carbonaceous solid fuel containing sulfur, hydrogen, and a solid sulfur acceptor capable of reacting with or absorbing hydrogen sulfide concurrently through a zone at a temperature above about 1100.degree. F whereby the hydrogen gas combines with the sulfur contained in the carbonaceous solid fuel to form hydrogen sulfide. The hydrogen sulfide which is formed reacts with the acceptor, typically a metal oxide, to form the corresponding sulfide of the metal. The effluent of the process is a mixture of the desulfurized carbonaceous solid fuel and the sulfided acceptor.
A major deficiency in the process proposed involves the separation of the desulfurized carbonaceous fuel from the solid sulfide acceptor in order to form a desulfurized carbonaceous solid fuel which is free of retained acceptor and an acceptor which is free of retained desulfurized carbonaceous fuel.